It is irrelevant whether or not obscurity is the only kind of protection available; obscurity is temporary and only needs to be defeated once. Furthermore, obsc

It is irrelevant whether or not obscurity is the only kind of protection available; obscurity is temporary and only needs to be defeated once. Furthermore, obscurity is not the only kind of security there is: Benevolent moderation is another form of protecting a community. And even if obscurity was the only kind of security available, we could simply invent a new kind of security. I am unaware of any websites that have "died". I assume you refer to the digg.com and reddit.com exoduses that are so often brought up. Comparing those two sites to Hacker News is not comparing apples to apples. The commercial purpose of those sites is to sell advertisement space to advertisers, so trading a small group of thinkers in favor of a large group of more advertisement friendly users makes commercial sense. Hacker News, on the other hand, probably has the commercial purpose of driving business to YCombinator. It is in Hacker News' best interest to keep the small group of thinkers in favour of the larger population. So there is good reason to believe that Hacker News will be able to overcome these growing pains and be a community for the thinkers for awhile yet.